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0:48

Hi, I'm Margie Nomura and welcome

0:51

to the Desert Island Dishes podcast. This

0:53

is the podcast where every week I ask

0:56

my guests to choose their seven Desert

0:58

Island dishes. These range from

1:00

finding out about the dish that most reminds them of

1:02

their childhood, the best dish they've

1:05

ever eaten and of course the

1:07

last dish they would choose to eat before being

1:09

cast off to the Desert Island. The

1:11

question is, what would you choose as

1:13

your last meal? Hi,

1:16

how are you? Hope you're all really

1:18

well.

1:18

So many of you have been

1:20

sending the loveliest messages recently

1:23

about the podcast and I just wanted

1:25

to say a huge thank you and I'm

1:27

just so happy that you're enjoying

1:30

it. We now nearly have 10,000 of

1:33

you signed up to the newsletter Dinner

1:35

Tonight, which is so

1:37

amazing and I actually get quite

1:40

nervous when I press send now because that's

1:43

a lot of inboxes. If you aren't

1:45

yet subscribed, you can head to

1:47

dinnertonight.substack.com

1:48

and you'll get

1:51

one gorgeous easy recipe

1:53

sent to you every Sunday that you can easily

1:56

cook for a weeknight supper. I

1:58

did my first Zoom cook-along

1:59

for the newsletter subscribers the other day which

2:02

was really fun and we've

2:04

got some very special guests coming up who

2:06

are going to be joining for the cooking ones too

2:08

which I'm really excited about. Anyway

2:11

on

2:11

to today's episode Sarah

2:14

is a very rare kind of person

2:16

who has had a lot of success

2:18

over the years in ways that lots

2:20

of people could only dream about and

2:23

yet she is not at all

2:25

motivated by the monetary rewards

2:27

that come from that success which

2:30

I think is so interesting and

2:32

I love speaking to her she

2:34

created a food empire when

2:36

she started I Quit Sugar and so

2:39

hearing how her interest in food began

2:41

and how it all started was really

2:43

interesting. I hope you enjoyed today's episode

2:46

do you let us know what you thought by leaving a

2:48

review and without further ado

2:51

here is today's episode. My

2:54

guest today is Sarah Wilson. Sarah

2:57

started I Quit Sugar in 2011 as

2:59

a lifestyle experiment for a column she was

3:01

writing and this led to an e-book

3:03

and then ultimately three New York Times

3:05

bestsellers and a business that

3:08

for 1.5 million people signing up to an eight-week

3:10

nutrition program

3:11

but as time went on Sarah

3:13

wasn't enjoying it anymore. She says

3:16

the business got to a point where it had gone

3:18

from being a joy creating inventing

3:20

connecting with people to a business concern

3:22

and it felt soul destroying and it felt

3:25

wrong. In February 2020 she

3:27

sold off the business and its assets and gave

3:29

everything to charity. She now donates

3:32

the money to carefully research charity

3:34

projects that target inequality indigenous

3:36

issues and the climate crisis. Sarah

3:39

consumes essentials only has never

3:41

owned a handbag and doesn't own a car.

3:44

Her career has been extraordinary.

3:46

She became the editor of Cosmopolitan Australia

3:48

at 29 hosted the most watched

3:51

TV series show in the nation's history

3:53

the first season of Masterchef Australia

3:55

and wrote the international bestseller

3:58

First We Make the

3:58

Beast Beautiful.

3:59

which Mark Manson described as the best

4:02

book on living with anxiety he's ever

4:04

read. Her most recent book, This

4:06

One Wild and Precious Life is also a

4:08

prize winner and Sarah has been ranked

4:10

in the top 200 most influential

4:13

authors in the world for two years in

4:15

a row. Welcome Sarah. So

4:17

lovely to be talking to you. Thank you for a very kind

4:20

introduction. Not at

4:22

all. I wondered how does it feel when

4:24

you hear an introduction like that and you look

4:26

back at everything that you've achieved? Well,

4:29

that's a really good question.

4:29

I suppose I often sit

4:32

there thinking, oh my God, this bio is going on for

4:34

a while. And then I just realized I am quite old.

4:37

I'm old. You've

4:40

done so much. And I'm like, yes, that's because I'm 50. So

4:44

yeah, I suppose

4:46

it sounds so varied. A lot of people

4:48

say, how does sugar,

4:50

anxiety, the climate crisis, how does it

4:52

all link together? For me,

4:55

there's been the big issues that

4:58

have stumped humans around

5:00

me at the time. And so

5:02

I just moved from one issue that's causing

5:05

pain in people's lives to the next one. And

5:07

my publisher once said to me, Sarah,

5:10

you just go for the hard problems. You

5:12

choose the problems that nobody else wants

5:15

to face and then you find a way to write about

5:17

it. So yes, that's my specialty,

5:19

I suppose. But yeah, it's been a career

5:22

of stumbling into things. I

5:24

have not ever applied for a

5:26

job. I've just

5:28

been doing the thing when

5:31

people have gone looking for, I don't

5:33

know, the editor of Cosmo or the host of MasterChef.

5:36

I literally was just going about my business,

5:38

loving what I was doing, often

5:41

doing stuff for free or doing extra

5:43

stuff beyond what I was meant to be doing in

5:45

any given job. So everything sort of

5:48

happened in that way. I have very little

5:50

expectation. That's incredible.

5:52

Hmm,

5:53

hmm, it's odd, it's odd.

5:55

What you just said about how those

5:57

things happen, you were just going about your business,

5:59

doing.

5:59

doing things that you enjoyed, maybe that's the secret.

6:02

You were doing things that you were really passionate about

6:05

and people could see that and that's what then ultimately

6:08

led to future jobs. Yes,

6:10

and also I've never been attached to the

6:12

pay outcome or the prestige or

6:15

the accoutrements. I'm

6:17

actually being usually quite oblivious. I'm

6:19

not very good at negotiating a pay rise, for instance, because

6:22

I generally don't know what people have been paid, but

6:24

it hasn't mattered to me. Having

6:27

had by anyone standards the

6:29

most incredibly

6:29

successful career, which we are going to dig

6:32

into in more detail, but I wondered

6:34

in researching you, what is your definition

6:36

of success now?

6:38

Oh, that's a great question.

6:41

For me, success is when

6:43

I feel congruent, when I wake up and I

6:45

feel like I am connected into

6:48

some sort of flow, you know, life

6:50

flow. That's when I know

6:52

I'm on the right path and that's

6:54

where I get the kick. I get the kick when

6:56

I'm connecting in, plugging in, I'm

6:59

attuned with my messaging and what

7:01

I'm doing. Yeah, success for me really

7:03

is creating

7:06

stuff that makes people

7:08

feel less alone in their wrangling

7:12

and their wrestling with this whole,

7:14

with this life, you know. And

7:17

yeah, fortunately I have a job where I get touch

7:19

points with other humans who are

7:22

able to tell me when they feel that connection. And

7:24

this seems like a silly question to ask, but

7:26

at the end of this podcast, we are going to send

7:28

you off to a desert island and I feel

7:30

like of all the guests we've ever had, you would probably

7:32

be the most prepared and possibly

7:35

most happy about that. What do you think? Yeah,

7:37

yeah, I'm very much a loner. I'm a

7:39

loner and I also grew up in a subsistence living farm.

7:43

So I grew up with having

7:45

to build everything, you know, my parents built

7:47

everything from scratch. Our house

7:50

was built from

7:50

bits and pieces that dad found in construction

7:53

sites. So yes, I'm very practical.

7:55

I can do, I can fence, I can concrete,

7:58

I can milk goats. So yes, I do.

7:59

probably do, people, my friends say to me, you

8:02

know, when the apocalypse comes, I want you in my

8:04

community. So yeah, an island

8:06

would suit me and I

8:09

love other humans so I wouldn't mind other humans with

8:11

me but hmm, I'd

8:14

probably send quite well. Yeah, I think if there was

8:16

an apocalypse I'd also want you on my

8:18

team too so, putting my flag in the ground

8:20

there. Let's dive straight into the first

8:22

desert island dish and that's the dish that most reminds

8:25

you of your childhood. Oh

8:27

yeah, well my mother used to

8:29

make me a cheesecake

8:31

to my birthday. I just loved it, I absolutely

8:33

loved it. It was made out of goat's milk so it probably

8:35

would taste strange to most people but you

8:38

know puff pastry, the pre-rolled pastry,

8:40

you know, it would be made out of that. That's probably

8:42

what reminds me of my childhood. It was only once

8:45

a year that I would get it but

8:47

it was definitely a highlight. Ooh,

8:49

that sounds good. Was food a really big

8:52

part of your life growing up like were your parents

8:54

passionate cooks? Yeah, mum

8:57

showed her love through food. She's not a very

8:59

affectionate person, she's very very shy

9:01

and introverted. I had five brothers

9:03

and sister and we ate

9:05

a hell of a lot, like we're all very large

9:08

humans and you know we

9:10

just ate and ate. Mum had a pig

9:13

farmers license so that she

9:15

could go and buy day-old bread for ten

9:17

cents a loaf because they had no money.

9:19

That's sort of how we got fed and you know

9:22

we had all kinds of seconds but I

9:24

used to eat a loaf of bread a day. All

9:26

this did.

9:27

Like that's how much we had to eat. And

9:30

I still eat huge amounts of food. It's

9:32

a slight problem. I do try to tone

9:34

it down where I can but we

9:36

just have big appetites. So mum was

9:40

really creative with food so I grew

9:42

up with Lebanese food, Thai

9:45

food, Vietnamese, all

9:47

kinds of cuisines generally made out

9:49

of and whatever vegetables

9:51

or fruits that we had growing and whatever mum

9:54

could get pretty cheap. But she was pretty creative

9:56

and the evening meal we had to be

9:58

there it was a

9:59

you know, it was the highlight of the day, um,

10:03

that we were obsessed by food. And also partly because

10:05

we lived in the country,

10:07

when the food ran out, that was it.

10:09

So everything was rationed. You knew exactly how many

10:11

pieces of fruit you could have per week,

10:14

how many loads of bread. So there was all

10:16

of that kind of thing that

10:17

was very much part of my childhood. So,

10:20

yeah, food was big. And I was very lucky to

10:22

actually have an introduction to it and very lucky to have

10:24

a mother who didn't die. My mother never

10:27

ever mentioned, Oh, I mustn't eat that, or I've

10:30

got to be careful about that. She was a big promoter

10:32

of that. Um, mostly because things didn't

10:34

get wasted.

10:35

And as a result, I think my sister

10:37

and I grew up with quite healthy attitudes

10:40

to

10:40

eating. It's so important, isn't

10:42

it? Children are like sponges, aren't they? Absolutely.

10:45

And what did you grow up thinking that you

10:47

wanted to be? Did you have any idea?

10:50

Well,

10:51

when I was seven, and

10:52

I don't remember this, but I believe

10:54

it. My mother told me this. I told mum that

10:57

I was going to be a nun or the first female

10:59

prime minister of Australia,

11:01

or something big, something

11:03

big. And, you know, and I figured that

11:05

was big. And, and mum

11:07

sort of says that I rationalised

11:10

that it was a way of not having a man

11:12

hold me back. Like I figured

11:15

that to be a nun or a prime minister, I didn't

11:17

have to have a man around me. And I got

11:19

it into my little seven year old head

11:21

that a bloke would, would prevent me from

11:23

having the life I wanted. Um, which

11:25

is so bizarre. That's so interesting.

11:28

Age seven. Yeah. Yeah. I was

11:30

very, very ambitious from a young age. I had my first

11:33

business at 11. Um,

11:35

first job at 11 first business. What was it? Um,

11:38

it was, I used to make these library bags. I'd

11:40

buy a bolt of fabric and

11:42

I'd make these library bags and then paint them with

11:45

like some baking elephants and, and

11:48

cockatoos and beautiful flowers.

11:50

And I'd sell them in these very expensive toy

11:53

shops. I also made dollhouse furniture. And,

11:56

um, greeting cards. I hand painted greetings. I'm

11:58

not artistic. Like.

13:59

skill sets lie and then if you're more creative

14:02

that tends to be cooking because it's a

14:04

bit less rule-based. I haven't

14:06

heard that before but I think there's much

14:09

to be said about it. I think to

14:11

bake you've got to be very precise and I'm not precise

14:14

like I I've written over 3,000 recipes

14:17

in my life for all the different cookbooks and programs

14:19

I've done but I would never

14:22

ever use a recipe

14:23

myself.

14:24

Isn't that

14:26

interesting? I used to drive my mother mad

14:29

you know probably after that experiment.

14:32

Sarah you've written over 3,000 recipes. Oh

14:35

God yeah yes I think I've

14:37

got 13 cookbooks and and

14:39

some of those cookbooks have over 300 like

14:42

two of the books have over 300 recipes

14:44

in them and then on top

14:46

of that I ran that 12-week program

14:49

and for the first

14:49

couple of years I wrote all the recipes

14:52

myself and you know it was

14:54

three meals a day for eight

14:57

weeks. Somebody estimated this 3,000 I

15:00

haven't done the numbers on it. I think it might

15:02

be more. I don't know but um

15:05

yeah I sort of I can do it intuitively now

15:07

you know I sort of know how much of this has to go with that

15:09

and what goes with that and

15:12

yeah

15:13

I cook by just yeah filling my way into

15:15

it whatever's in the fridge I'll work with it. So let's

15:17

talk about I quit sugar so I

15:19

think it started as a personal project

15:22

when you were researching a column and it

15:24

ultimately became this huge international

15:27

movement. What were the steps

15:29

between those two things like was the

15:31

book becoming an international bestseller

15:34

the catalyst for it all?

15:36

Yeah so I think I I think I mentioned

15:38

it a bit earlier like it sort of happened

15:40

by accident. I have

15:42

an autoimmune disease called Hashimoto's

15:46

and some of your listeners would either know

15:48

someone with it or have it themselves and

15:50

I got a very very bad case of it so I got

15:53

to a point where I couldn't walk I couldn't work

15:55

I got extremely unwell and

15:57

so I just packed myself up and I'd

15:59

off a lot of belongings

16:01

and I moved up to an army

16:03

shed in a forest outside

16:05

a town called Byron Bay, which is a beautiful place.

16:08

It's a surfer town, a bit of a hippie town.

16:11

And I was experimenting with

16:13

my health and I wrote a column once a week, as you

16:15

mentioned, for a newspaper

16:18

magazine where I experimented with different

16:20

ideas for having a better life. And

16:23

it was what the self-serving way of being able

16:25

to go about healing while earning a little

16:27

bit of money. And I was short of a column. I

16:29

knew quitting sugar would probably help. I'd

16:31

done enough research to know that it would certainly

16:34

help with my inflammatory disease, but also my mental

16:36

health. I also have bipolar. So

16:38

I tried it out for

16:41

two weeks and I was a gnarly sugar addict.

16:43

So I wasn't drinking Coca-Cola and eating

16:46

flaps of chocolate cake, but

16:48

I was eating the seductive sugar, the so-called healthy

16:50

sugars. So I was eating granola for breakfast

16:52

with lots

16:53

of dried fruit

16:54

and yogurt or yoghurt.

16:56

I was having a big muffin

16:58

after lunch or no, at 11 o'clock, you know, one

17:01

of those big muffins. And you think that because it's a muffin, it

17:03

must be healthy. I was doing all of those kinds of things.

17:05

And I added up that I was eating around about 30

17:08

teaspoons of sugar a day and

17:10

our bodies can handle between six and nine.

17:12

So I gave it a go. I quit and

17:15

I felt

17:16

like better within two

17:18

weeks. My skin changed completely.

17:21

My inflammation went down. I had a clearer

17:23

head and I stuck to it. I just

17:26

kept going and going. Twitter had just been invented.

17:28

So there I was in my army shed

17:31

sharing horrible pictures of these different

17:33

things I was making. I was making like, I think I was one

17:35

of the first people to do vegan chocolate

17:37

mousse, you know, with the avocado. And

17:40

I was taking it with the avocado. Really

17:42

for two years, I ran what became

17:45

the eight week program on Facebook

17:48

for free. On my own and around

17:50

about I think it was about 2000 people

17:52

did the program that way. And then I

17:55

started I thought, I'll put all the recipes

17:57

and the program together into an ebook. I paid 100.

17:59

dollars to do an online

18:00

course on how to do

18:03

ebooks and I put together this ebooks.

18:05

Not many people knew about them and

18:08

it became an Amazon bestseller. I was expecting to

18:10

sell 100

18:11

copies that would pay

18:14

back you know my hundred bucks and

18:16

in the end it just kind of turned into

18:19

a juggernaut. Then it came out as a print

18:21

book so I did everything back to front. Back in those

18:23

days it was really odd to do it that way

18:25

but it took off initially as an ebook

18:27

that's right became a bestseller that way that's

18:30

amazing. So it caught people's

18:32

attention because I was like where did this come from and

18:35

it was a number one you know seller

18:37

in the US so it just sort of kept growing

18:40

and growing and yeah

18:43

I just followed the lead as people needed

18:45

more stuff more information more whatever I

18:47

would just kind of produce it

18:49

until it

18:51

became not so much something where I was

18:53

helping people it became a business

18:55

where I had to leverage and I had

18:58

to make lots of money to pay staff to pay for

19:00

this to pay for that you know

19:02

the whole capitalist set up and

19:04

I went this is madness I'm not here to leverage and

19:07

to make money and to turn this into

19:09

a business and so that's when I

19:11

decided to give it all up. At that time I

19:13

remember really clearly I mean it

19:16

was huge and you were everywhere

19:19

and everyone was talking about I quit

19:21

sugar like it was the movement of the year

19:24

or you know of that period

19:26

of time. What was the experience

19:28

of being almost catapulted

19:30

into the spotlight like for you

19:33

because you know that wasn't what you set out

19:35

to do you were just trying to help people

19:37

you wrote an ebook and it turned into this

19:39

book and then it became this much bigger thing

19:42

how did you how did that feel personally?

19:45

Yeah I rode with it I guess

19:48

you know I suppose unlike

19:50

maybe people today entering into a

19:52

new realm I was quite old

19:54

right so I had had a career in

19:57

Murdoch Media

19:58

where I was the youngest

20:01

opinion columnist in the whole of the Murdoch Empire.

20:03

I was 23 and I had a political

20:06

column. Wow. And so

20:08

I caught trolls then. It was handwritten

20:10

letters. So I learned to learn

20:13

about coping with that then. And I also

20:15

had my photo in the column. I started to get

20:17

identified from a young age, but it was, you know, it

20:20

was pretty tame. It wasn't online. Then

20:23

internet got invented and a few things

20:25

grew from there. And then Cosmo and

20:27

I started to be, you know, the society

20:30

pages and things like that. And by the time online

20:32

started to happen, I was pretty,

20:35

you know, I was pretty hardened. I was, you

20:37

know, a lot older and and

20:40

philosophical about it all. So I suppose

20:42

that's how

20:43

I was able to handle it. I found

20:46

it incredibly fun, to be honest. There were

20:48

bits that I didn't find fun because of course, I

20:50

started out doing this because I was

20:52

sick and I was trying to heal myself.

20:54

So while everyone was creating, I

20:57

loved it. And if that meant being, you

20:59

know, at the opening of things and photographed

21:01

and whatever and recognized in the street. I

21:03

mean, I used to come to London and

21:07

I'd be wearing my green. I used to wear these green shorts.

21:09

I had them for 11 years. So people know me from my

21:12

clothes because I wear the same clothes. Oh,

21:14

yeah, I've seen them in the photo. I

21:17

wear the same clothes every single day.

21:19

Like I only have a very small selection

21:22

of clothes. I live out of one bag. And

21:24

so people would go, I see Sarah,

21:26

I recognize the green shorts. It wasn't like there

21:28

was paparazzi following me down the street. And

21:31

they soon realized there's not many secrets with

21:33

me. And and they were never going to get a big

21:36

expose, an exclusive

21:37

because I write about everything

21:39

that's personal to me. So that's

21:42

amazing that you had that position

21:44

at the age of 23. Would

21:47

you say you're an overachiever and

21:49

an overachiever? I mean, that I

21:51

mean that as a compliment. Oh, yeah. Before

21:53

we met, I was thinking, wow, Sarah

21:56

is the kind of person that puts her mind to something and

21:58

she just makes stuff happen.

23:59

90, in 40 degree heat,

24:02

this

24:02

is Celsius, with almost 100%

24:04

humidity. And I'd

24:07

lost everything in my stomach and all my

24:09

blood and the whole thing. Anyway, I arrived, I passed

24:12

out, my brother had to carry him into a shower, he

24:14

rang my parents, what do I do? And they said, feed her. So

24:17

he took me down to this like little hole in the wall place

24:19

and he spoke a bit of Vietnamese because

24:22

he was living there. And it

24:24

was just a woman that had a cauldron

24:27

and it was a chicken curry.

24:29

And it had lots of sweet potato and potato

24:31

and carrots in it. And it

24:34

was served with a baguette because they've got that French influence,

24:37

particularly up in the mountains, we've got up to Delat.

24:40

And

24:41

I sat down and I had the first mouthful

24:43

of this curry.

24:45

And I could feel the electricity

24:47

going through my body.

24:48

Like literally I was kind of

24:51

tingling, it was like I was on fire.

24:53

And I just cried, it

24:56

was the most incredible sensation. I

24:58

could just feel the nutrients going into my body. And

25:01

I took a photo of it and the photo of this meal

25:03

sat above my computer

25:06

for many, many years. So

25:08

that was probably my most memorable favorite meal I've

25:10

ever eaten. Wow, and it sat above

25:13

your computer just to remind you of

25:16

how amazing that feeling was,

25:18

or was it specifically about the meal? Both,

25:21

I mean, I recreated that meal and it was

25:24

a staple on the eight

25:26

week program and

25:29

features in, I think, my first

25:31

cookbook. Because I think I was 25

25:33

when I did that ride with my brother or maybe

25:36

a little bit old. Actually, no, I was when I was older, I was 30.

25:39

What an amazing experience.

25:41

With I Quit Sugar, it

25:43

was all about food and it was about

25:46

people and about health. And since

25:49

you've moved away from that, your work has been

25:51

largely about climate change, but it strikes

25:54

me that those two things are

25:56

connected because ultimately they're about

25:58

people. Do you think that's... your biggest

26:00

passion in life is actually

26:02

people.

26:03

Yeah, I was always an outsider.

26:05

I didn't have friends and I was bullied from

26:08

a young age in part because it's just we were widows

26:10

living out in the country.

26:11

We commuted into town

26:13

to a small country school and then into town

26:15

to high school. So

26:17

I think I spent a lot of my life

26:19

watching people and trying to understand people

26:21

and loving them, you know, even

26:23

when I was being bullied.

26:26

So

26:26

that would be the common thread.

26:28

Yeah, I

26:30

guess it's also,

26:32

you know,

26:33

I wrote a post recently on my sub

26:35

stack about how I go about writing

26:37

a book or how I choose a topic, you know, how do I

26:39

get started? And somebody had asked

26:42

me that and I said, I can smell,

26:44

I smell pain in zeitgeist. I

26:47

can smell where humans are at. And

26:50

so, yeah, I mean, it went from the sugar

26:52

thing, just it was just,

26:54

I mean, back then, for some listeners you

26:56

might not recall, but sugar was in

26:58

everything. And there was no discussion about

27:00

it being bad. And people were wondering

27:03

why their energy was just so low and

27:05

they felt powerless and they were trying all different diets

27:08

and all that kind of thing. And so, and then I,

27:10

you know, and then I moved on to anxiety, depression

27:12

and so on. And then on to the climate

27:15

crisis. All of them

27:16

were at times just before,

27:18

I suppose, there

27:20

was a really good dialogue

27:21

happening.

27:22

Yeah, you've been ahead of the tide. Mm,

27:25

yeah. And with the climate,

27:27

yes. I was probably a little bit early for

27:29

that, but then not because the damage

27:32

was happening and people needed to wake up to it.

27:35

And then, you know, now I'm moving on to a new

27:38

topic, which, you know, I

27:40

always get frightened because I think people are gonna, you know, is

27:42

this a thing, are people gonna believe me? Are people gonna

27:44

trust the research I do? That's

27:47

interesting. So even at this stage where you've

27:49

had all the successes that you've had, you

27:52

do still have that worry in the back of your

27:54

head about

27:55

what that's gonna look like moving forward.

27:58

Oh my God, I'm riddled with self-doubt every single.

27:59

day, every single day.

28:02

Oh yeah, so

28:04

like I said before you know first we make the beast beautiful

28:06

took seven years, this one wild and precious

28:08

life took three years to write. It's a lot longer

28:10

than most people take to write a book and it's

28:12

because in the writing of the book

28:15

I take people on the journey as I

28:17

try to navigate a beautiful path

28:19

through these complex issues and

28:21

I'm living and breathing it so when

28:23

I start out I'm in the pain of it all

28:26

and I don't know where it's all gonna hit and then it

28:28

gradually morphed into something. I think

28:30

that's why it's so powerful because in a

28:33

lot of books like

28:34

that it doesn't feel so personal

28:36

from the writer and it's sort of it's

28:38

more just anecdotal

28:40

advice but to feel

28:43

you actually living that experience

28:45

and sharing it with the reader I think that's why

28:47

it resonates so much and I think that makes

28:50

it quite unique. Thank you yeah

28:52

I couldn't write a book in any other way I wouldn't

28:55

know how to I don't think I'd be bored. We're

28:58

gonna move on to the most important question of the

29:01

day Sarah what is your favourite sandwich?

29:03

Well

29:04

I don't eat a lot of sandwiches but I'll tell

29:06

you what I used to eat as a kid

29:08

and these were my favourite sandwiches. I used to fry an

29:10

egg we had ducks so I used to fry it with a large

29:12

egg and I would have that with

29:15

raw onion on my sandwich no wonder I

29:17

didn't have any friends.

29:20

Wait so a fried egg on bread

29:22

with raw onion? Yeah

29:25

yeah it's a really great combination.

29:27

I would also have vegemite

29:30

and lettuce or you know pre-mite

29:32

and lettuce. I don't think

29:34

I'm gonna get anybody feeling really inspired

29:36

by these sandwiches. I used to

29:38

always say anchovies just anchovies

29:41

on yeah on sandwiches so

29:43

yeah I would not come to me for sandwich

29:45

suggestions although in my cookbooks I do invent

29:47

a whole range of really cool sandwich ideas.

29:50

Quickly backpedalling there but

29:53

don't worry people won't judge you on the sandwiches

29:57

of your past. We know that ultimately

29:59

when you you sold your company, you gave the

30:01

profits to charity and that money

30:04

just isn't an important thing to you. I wondered,

30:07

has it ever mattered to you? Well,

30:09

I actually gave

30:10

all the money to charity, not just the profits.

30:11

Oh wow. Because it was just easier, I couldn't

30:13

be bothered to work out the sums. I mean, it was just a cleaner

30:16

transaction and I just wanted to be done

30:18

with it. Money has mattered

30:20

to me,

30:21

like as a kid obviously, I was really

30:24

obsessed by saving up money and

30:26

so on. But owning things

30:28

has never interested me. I like

30:30

to be secure and know I'm not in debt. So when

30:32

I gave the money away, basically I gave the money

30:34

away because I've made a commitment to myself

30:37

to never get caught up in the system again. And

30:39

this is after I had hit rock bottom and

30:41

I was at a suicidal point where

30:44

I suddenly realised literally

30:46

in the 11th hour, that you know, the

30:48

final second in the 11th hour, that

30:51

oh my God, one thing I haven't tried is

30:53

living how I want to live with

30:56

just the clothes on my back

30:58

and not caught up in the system. I'll live by

31:00

my rules

31:01

and I'll just be a free agent floating around

31:03

the world. When the business started,

31:06

I made a commitment that once I got to a point

31:08

where I was financially stable to live off

31:10

the minimum wage for the rest of my life, I

31:14

would give any, I would give all further

31:16

funds away to charity and

31:18

I would just work on projects that mattered

31:20

to me.

31:21

And so when that happened,

31:23

the day that it happened, I just started shutting down

31:25

the business and selling off the assets

31:27

because I

31:29

am committed to

31:31

living that way. I know it's

31:33

the way that makes me happy. It's

31:35

so interesting. Like we obviously all know

31:38

the saying that money doesn't equal happiness.

31:41

So you're obviously a certain level of wealth

31:43

can make your life easier and more comfortable. But

31:45

I think that our studies that once

31:48

you pass a particular threshold,

31:50

your life doesn't get exponentially better.

31:52

And in fact, it gets a bit worse. If you're

31:55

not in that position, it's

31:57

impossible to imagine that.

31:59

But given

31:59

what your experience has been, I'm

32:02

so interested to know if that does

32:04

ring true with you. Oh 100% and it

32:06

was a big thing that I was aware of intuitively and

32:08

then I heard about the studies that show how

32:11

that works. Yeah I would say so, I look

32:13

around at all my friends and contemporaries who

32:15

get more and more money and honestly they

32:17

spend most of their life shuffling money

32:20

around either bank accounts or

32:22

properties or you know and when

32:25

you can't afford something or something's

32:27

out of that pay bracket

32:29

it

32:29

actually makes life super simple. I think it's

32:32

maybe because when you get to that threshold

32:34

you've got just enough to be comfortable

32:37

and the things that matter and

32:39

then if you pass that point it's

32:42

just about that doesn't

32:44

really matter and then underneath the

32:47

threshold you're more able to

32:49

see what's actually important and

32:51

then once you surpass it you kind

32:53

of lose perspective on what

32:55

it is that actually matters. Yeah

32:58

I've written about it actually my brother used to

33:00

get so much joy saving up for things

33:02

he would research forever he'd go to the library

33:05

and buy BMX magazines you know borrow BMX magazines

33:07

he'd research the BSES BMX and

33:10

and

33:10

once the BMX arrived I mean he was thrilled

33:12

with it but I think the process of saving

33:14

up for it and making the choice and being really discerning

33:17

is what the fun bit was and what I see

33:19

with very wealthy people is they're not engaged

33:22

in the discernment they're not engaged in prioritizing

33:24

and really thinking about what matters to them. That's

33:26

a very good point. Yeah I mean part of the reason

33:29

I left Australia to come and live in Paris was

33:31

because Australia had become so materialistic

33:34

and I had to leave

33:36

that because it was affecting me. That was actually

33:39

one of my questions about the

33:40

act of giving because you've said that

33:43

whilst it is like obviously a very generous

33:45

thing to do you've described it

33:47

as actually being the most reliable

33:50

happiness or wellness hit that

33:52

you can get and that made me think

33:54

because I think it's so true that

33:56

often I don't know you set yourself

33:58

goals and you work towards

37:59

So I still live that way, but I do eat three

38:02

squares of 90% dark

38:05

chocolate for breakfast every morning, which always shocks

38:07

people. That's

38:09

what makes me happy. I knew it was every day. I didn't know

38:11

it was for breakfast. It's for breakfast. It's all

38:13

I ate for breakfast. Yeah.

38:14

I love that. I'm going to adopt that

38:16

myself.

38:17

Since stepping away from iQuit Sugar, you've

38:19

continued to write bestselling books. You have

38:22

a newsletter and the latest book, This One

38:24

Wild and Precious Life. To me,

38:26

it's an exploration in what matters

38:29

most in life. But is that how you'd sum

38:31

it up? Yeah, I mean, that's basically

38:34

the through line for the book. You

38:36

know, my modus operandi was to get people

38:38

engaged in the death of the planet and

38:41

really our existential precariousness.

38:45

And how do you do that? I was watching the climate

38:47

movement. It wasn't engaging people. It

38:49

was engaging the same people. But a lot of people

38:51

just went into denial, into overwhelm, you

38:54

know, put their hands up and said, I can't even and

38:56

just consumed more. So

38:59

it was about trying to find a way to

39:01

both engage people in it. So people

39:04

who had a guilty, itchy, cringy

39:06

feeling that they're not living how they're meant

39:08

to and getting them feeling

39:11

like activism. And activism

39:13

can take all different forms. I'm

39:14

not a protester in the street waving

39:16

things because it's just I

39:18

get very awkward around that. But so there's

39:20

all kinds of ways that you can be engaged.

39:23

And then I agonised about

39:26

how to make this new

39:28

way of being sexier than the status

39:30

quo, because that's the only way that change comes about.

39:33

And so hiking, I felt, was a really

39:35

good way to do that. So

39:37

I hike around the world and there's three hikes that

39:39

I do in the UK. And I

39:41

hike in the footsteps, like I mentioned before, people like

39:44

Nietzsche, Wordsworth, but

39:46

I also go in search of this bizarre

39:49

monk down in Japan who's

39:52

an expert on forest bathing. And so I finally

39:54

meet up with him and we do a hike together. It took me four

39:56

days in the mountains to find him, all this kind of thing.

39:59

So I try to...

39:59

to make the whole hiking thing seem really cool

40:02

and embracing. And

40:05

basically that's because when you get out into

40:07

nature, nature can do its work on

40:09

you and you start to feel this

40:11

expansiveness and you feel this awe and you feel

40:13

this congruency and attunement and

40:16

you really do become part

40:19

of, I guess, the natural flow of life.

40:21

And my thesis was when

40:23

you love something hard enough, when a human loves

40:25

something hard enough, we will do whatever we

40:27

can to fight to save it. And I feel

40:30

that we've become, we've become so disconnected

40:33

from the matrix of life, from our

40:35

nature, from nature.

40:38

We were craving a reconnect and

40:40

when we reconnect, we suddenly realized

40:42

we've got to fight for this. No, it's so true, like

40:44

reading about your explorations

40:46

and the hikes, it sounds, yeah,

40:50

the adventures sound amazing and you're right

40:52

that they also feel very far removed

40:55

from people's everyday life. We

40:57

were talking before we started recording

40:59

that you said that

41:02

the reaction to the book in the

41:03

UK

41:05

has been the one that's

41:07

most resistant to actually acknowledging

41:09

the climate change aspect, which

41:12

I think that's really shocking. So does

41:14

that mean that the UK, like

41:16

we just don't want to accept that

41:19

it's a problem?

41:20

Yeah, I've been trying to get my head

41:22

around it. So I mean, previously

41:24

when I've worked on different books, so

41:26

the I Quit Sugar book, it took a number

41:29

of years before it came out in

41:31

the UK. But with the climate, it's sort of interesting.

41:33

I was in the UK last year

41:36

when it was that hottest day, it was 40 degrees

41:38

in London, the pavements were

41:40

melting. I'd been hiking up

41:43

in the north of England and it looks like Australia.

41:45

The earth had cracks in it and the sheep

41:49

were looking emaciated. It was

41:51

such a surreal experience. But I was

41:54

listening to the news reports, I was catching

41:56

up at dinner parties, our mutual

41:58

friend organized a dinner party.

41:59

I think the night before that really hot day, Melissa

42:03

Hemsley, who's just one

42:05

of the most fabulous people on the planet, bit

42:07

of a shout out to her because she deserves it,

42:10

and

42:10

does beautiful recipes. I presume

42:12

she's been on this show because

42:13

she would have some incredible desert

42:16

island recipes. But

42:18

yeah, I was amazed at how

42:21

people just weren't talking it.

42:23

And I suppose it hadn't hit them, even

42:25

though Europe and their holiday destinations are only

42:27

an hour away. I like Spain was

42:30

burning, Portugal was burning.

42:32

I suppose it hasn't been right

42:34

on the doorstep.

42:36

And look, I think there's also, I

42:39

don't like sort of making cross generalizations

42:41

about an entire nation, but my experience,

42:44

and I think the reputation of the Brits is that they

42:46

don't like

42:47

confrontation,

42:49

and don't like making a fuss,

42:52

you know? Oh, it'll be all right. I

42:54

think that's got a lot to do with it because to

42:57

really fully embrace the reality, the

42:59

truth, and the beauty of

43:01

the climate crisis,

43:03

you have to confront. And that's

43:05

the challenge, I think. And it's a challenge for everyone,

43:07

but I think in Britain, there is that culture

43:09

of, oh, we don't make

43:12

a fuss of these things, we don't get too hysterical. Are

43:14

you worried that because of the

43:17

cost of living crisis and

43:19

the consequences of COVID in the

43:21

last couple of years, that people

43:25

who might previously have really

43:27

cared about the climate

43:29

wrongly, it seems less of an

43:31

emergency compared to the other

43:34

immediate

43:35

things that people are dealing with. Do you think that's

43:37

a major problem? Oh, 100%, it's

43:39

a very big challenge. And the

43:42

horrible irony of exactly

43:44

what you've just pointed out is that the

43:46

cost of living crisis, the pandemics

43:49

and the very real threat that

43:52

we're gonna get another pandemic is

43:54

way worse than COVID-19

43:55

any time now. All of those

43:57

things

43:58

are the climate crisis.

44:00

That is the climate crisis. That is

44:02

what life is going to look like as we

44:04

experience climate collapse. So

44:06

as energy becomes

44:09

a scarce resource and more and more expensive,

44:11

the cost of living in crisis just explodes.

44:14

And this is not a scenario

44:16

that's just going to drop off and we'll go back to normal. There

44:18

is no more normal. And that is because

44:21

we've hit six out of nine planetary boundaries

44:23

and two of the remaining three are about to go.

44:26

There is no stopping this runaway train.

44:30

And so the cost of living crisis, it

44:32

is the climate crisis. This is the reality.

44:34

It's terrifying.

44:36

In a very unnatural segue,

44:38

Sarah, we're going to talk about the sixth desert island

44:41

dish. What is your go-to dinner

44:43

party dish? Well, actually,

44:45

there's a bit of a segue there. Anyone who's watched Don't

44:48

Look Up, there's the final scene

44:50

in the movie where everyone's having a dinner party.

44:52

So dinner parties, I think that's a great way to live

44:54

in the moment and have a beautiful

44:57

existence. What's my go-to

44:59

dinner party dish? I do these

45:02

little things like where I make dim sims out

45:06

of rice paper

45:06

rolls, so they're gluten free, but

45:08

I do them hamburger flavour. Sounds

45:10

really wrong. I'm sure my Asian

45:13

brethren are thinking this is insane. But I'll get

45:16

grated beetroot,

45:17

you know, sort of some kind of

45:19

meat. You can cheat by using a bit of sausage

45:22

and cheese and pickles

45:24

and you roll it all up and bake it in

45:26

the oven. It's awesome because the cheese melts

45:29

through it all and they're just like little hors d'oeuvres things

45:31

with a novelty effect. Serve

45:34

it with tomato sauce. Yeah,

45:36

I've never heard of something like that. Yeah, I invented

45:38

it. That's not a good decision. You know, actually, what

45:40

really works and I often make is a superfood

45:44

lasagna cake. What I

45:46

do is I worked out that rice paper rolls are

45:48

the same size as one of those springform

45:51

cake tins. So it's

45:53

the perfect size. So rather than using

45:56

your layers of pasta

45:58

sheets, you use rice paper rolls.

45:59

rolls, which you can buy from Asian

46:02

grocers, super, super cheap. And

46:04

so I would layer up these rice

46:06

paper rolls with all different layers and you can

46:08

make it vegetarian or meat based, you

46:11

know, your tomato sauce, layers of eggplant,

46:13

layers of aubergine courgettes

46:16

and then and mince

46:19

and so on. And you layer it all up with in between.

46:21

You do these sheets of rice paper roll, bake it in the

46:23

oven and then you release the springform

46:25

tin, it's a cake.

46:26

It's this incredible, magnificent layered cake. Wow.

46:29

And do you do you soak the rice paper

46:32

before you layer it up? No, there's

46:34

no need. I make recipes where you cut out

46:36

steps, so you don't need to do that because you've got all

46:38

the moisture, particularly from the aubergine. Right.

46:41

So it's that soaks it as it's cooking.

46:43

Wow. That sounds amazing. I'm going to have to try that. At

46:45

your dinner parties, do you serve pudding? Yeah, I'll

46:48

tell you one like really cheap, easy

46:50

dish that I make when I'm in charge of making

46:52

sugar free dessert. And it's in my

46:55

first cookbook, but I do variations

46:57

of it. Like I basically get

46:59

coconut oil. I mix it with raw cacao

47:01

powder, a bit of rice, malt syrup

47:04

and rock salt, and then

47:06

make a big batch of that. And then I,

47:09

I make this bark. So I've

47:11

put sort of some grease proof paper

47:13

out and I'll then place a whole

47:15

bunch of coconut berries,

47:18

nuts,

47:19

um, and then pour the chocolate sauce over

47:21

the top and put it in the freezer. And then I break

47:23

it up into bark. And sometimes I'll buy

47:26

like a sugar free ice cream or I'll make it myself.

47:28

And I make this kind of explosion kind

47:30

of big cake, you know, sort

47:33

of monstrosity. I sort of make it very organic

47:35

with the bark sticking out of it and berries

47:37

and flowers, and it sort of looks like this

47:39

big sort of centerpiece and you keep it in the fridge

47:41

until you're ready to serve it. Oh, I think

47:43

I've made your bark. It's very good. Very

47:46

good indeed. On Dazzler Island dishes,

47:48

we have a cookbook corner. I wondered

47:50

what is your most treasured cookbook? Okay.

47:53

So like I said, I don't use cookbooks,

47:55

but when I needed to sort of look up a traditional

47:58

recipe, I would go to. Stephanie

48:00

Alexander. Stephanie Alexander is

48:03

like, who's your doyenne of

48:05

cookbook writing? Mary Berry? Mary

48:07

Berry or Delia Smith? Yes, so

48:10

Stephanie Alexander is the Australian version

48:12

of that. We have another one called Margaret Fulton. That

48:14

was my mother's generation.

48:17

Stephanie Alexander would write these

48:19

big fat cookbooks which were essentially

48:21

an A to Z of the classic

48:24

recipes. And so you would literally

48:26

search by ingredient and you

48:28

would find all the things you could make with that

48:30

ingredient. And she was one of the first to do cookbooks

48:32

like that. And the premise behind it, and I

48:34

ended up doing my indexes like that,

48:36

was by ingredient.

48:38

If you have a whole heap of aubergines or a whole

48:40

heap of tomatoes or a whole heap of cucumbers and you

48:42

wanna do something with them, you could go to

48:44

this chapter and find a bunch of things to do. So

48:46

that's my go-to cookbook for sure. It's

48:49

accurate, it's got all the very traditional

48:51

ways of making things with lots of little notes

48:53

on the side. And you'll notice,

48:56

Margie, on my books, I have these big fat columns

48:58

where I allow people to write notes and I

49:01

put notes in the side as well. So as I edit

49:03

the book and I'm massaging it into shape,

49:05

I write my personal little notes

49:07

on the side and I do it so that people

49:10

write their bits and then when they share the book

49:12

with a loved one or a friend or whatever, it's

49:14

got comments in there as well. And Stephanie

49:16

Alexander did a bit of that in her cookbook.

49:19

She'd have little notes to the side, giving you little

49:21

extra tips. I love that. There's nothing

49:23

better than getting a secondhand book that's got

49:25

someone's personal notes about what they loved

49:28

and what they did. Love that. We're

49:30

onto the final seventh desert island

49:33

dish. What is the last dish you would choose to

49:35

eat before being cast off to the desert island?

49:37

I think about this way too often. I've

49:39

been obsessed by death row for a long,

49:42

long time and I've interviewed two people

49:44

who counsel people on

49:46

death row. You know the nun from Dead Man

49:48

Walking? She's like a real life nun. Susan

49:51

Sarandon played here in the movie. So

49:53

it's nun, Sister Helen Prejean.

49:56

And she's on Instagram if you want to follow her. She's

49:58

in her late 80s now. She wrote the

50:00

book and the movie is about her.

50:02

So I think about what I would choose

50:05

as my last dish before I was

50:07

being executed. Similar concept.

50:09

This is a bit less morbid than that, Sarah.

50:11

You're just going to a lovely desert island for a while.

50:14

That's right, that's right. But yes, needless

50:16

to say, I have thought about the last meal I would

50:18

have in civilization. I think I would eat

50:20

roast pork, a big

50:23

roast pork dinner with

50:24

apple sauce, sweet potato,

50:27

all the crackling with steamed

50:30

courgettes that I absolutely love. Like when

50:32

I get asked what's the one food you

50:34

could not live without, it would be courgettes.

50:37

As the staple food that can just go into anything.

50:39

Oh, really? So

50:41

yeah, that's probably the last meal I would eat.

50:44

And would you have pudding before

50:46

you go?

50:47

Yeah, what would I choose? I'd either be

50:49

that cheesecake I mentioned earlier, or

50:52

the 90% dark chocolate, or,

50:56

you know, I'm a big fan also, I'd probably go

50:58

an apple crumble, an apple crumble.

51:00

Because you want comfort food, you know? Yes,

51:03

you can't go wrong with an apple crumble. Yeah,

51:05

yeah.

51:06

Very good choice. Sarah, with that,

51:08

we're going to send you off to the desert island. Thank

51:10

you so much. I'm looking forward

51:12

to sending for myself. I

51:15

have a lot of faith in you, Sarah. I think you're going to be absolutely

51:18

fine.

51:20

So there we have it. Another delicious

51:22

day of desert island dishes. Don't

51:24

forget that you can rate, review, and subscribe

51:27

to the podcast on iTunes. It really

51:29

does make such a difference. I know it's so boring

51:31

when people say that line over and over again,

51:34

but by doing that, you boost the show in

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the charts,

51:36

and then that means that other people are

51:38

more likely to come across it, and you get

51:40

more listeners, and that means

51:43

I can keep bringing it to you each week, which

51:45

is great. If you don't already, then

51:47

you can come and follow me on Instagram at

51:49

desertislandishes. And don't forget,

51:52

you can go to dinnertonight.substack.com,

51:55

where you can sign up for the newsletter. Thank

51:58

you very much for listening, and I- See you next

52:00

week.